For the renovation, Bulent Baydar of Harrison Design in Atlanta was the couple’s architect of choice. Baydar immediately set about reimagining the home’s potential. “It was not at all the style that these homeowners wanted,” he says. “It was a typical ranch house with very traditional spaces. They wanted a Santa Barbara–style house—a clean-lined Spanish influence on the exterior and a modern look inside.”
First, the anemic-pink brick had to go. Baydar covered the entire façade with stucco and replaced all the windows and doors. “We then added a clay-tile roof, which didn’t require too much extra structural work,” he says. The portcullis-like front door was replaced with a Spanish-style wood plank door inset with a small window. On the back of the original house, a patchwork of multiple-paned, double-hung windows allowed limited views of the outdoors. “We opened up the entire rear façade with large banks of windows overlooking the wooded view,” says Baydar.
Inside the house, clean lines and bold spaces bring in the Santa Barbara style. With the new expanse of glass connecting the house to the outdoors, the design enhances rather than competes with the view. “The ceiling heights were already 9 feet, but we did vault the kitchen/dining/ living room space to follow the roofline. We also added some false beams to bring the space down to a human scale,” says Baydar. Because the kitchen is completely open to the family room and the dining room, the homeowners wanted modern slab cabinetry that would complement the space, he adds.
